I’ve been scoping them out for a couple years now, and finally made the plunge the day before Thanksgiving. I bought nordic blades. They open up a whole new world in skating, making the uneven surfaces and obstacles embedded into the surfaces of lakes, marshes, and tarns easy to skate on. As Jeff put it-they are like the 4×4 of ice skating. Also, I’m trying to make lemonade out of a lemon of a winter so far…..the lack of snow (zero) has definitely impacted my enthusiasm, so I’m embracing what we do have plenty of-ice!

I never would have guessed to head to the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge to skate on the inlet had I not found a note about it on a local ice skating forum. We had extremely high tides combined with cold temps this week that made the inlet/refuge into a nordic blade haven.

Eva and Dan heading into the noon sun….which isn’t far off the horizon this time of year.

Some challenging ice….Nordic blades make this stuff completely doable.

We found some beautiful ice! There were a lot of places where the ice was as nice as if it had been zambonied.

Jeff and Sabrina headed out with me a couple days later to try nordic blading.

Tika seemed to get around just fine without skates.

I did manage to make it to Turnagain and ski over the weekend with Brian and Sabrina….to ski on snow that fell weeks ago. One of the only places that hasn’t been ripping out due to the cold, clear weather creating hoarfrost and instability was Tincan. We were suprised that it wasn’t as tracked out as we imagined it would be.

Sabrina enjoying the sunshine and temperature inversion on top of Tincan.

Just because Brian is one of the best snowboarders I know, I had to post this pic….it was fun watching him on skis for the first time since 7th grade 🙂

Like this:

We’ve had below average amounts of snow this winter in Southcentral Alaska. It finally snowed late last week, so Saturday Jon and I took advantage of the fresh powder, bluebird skies, and warm temperatures (it warmed up from 4F at my house to 20F+ at the parking lot) in Turnagain and went skiing at Tincan. Suprisingly, it wasn’t crowded.

Jon on the skin up.

Jon with Tincan Proper. We did have gusts of wind. But the snow was light, fluffy, Utah-like powder!